Page 34 - RE-NJ

32 JANUARY 2024
STRENGTH AND STABILITY
Panelists say long-term leadership in business, government is central to New Brunswick’s highly touted revival
For every advantage that New Brunswick has, its strength may well be rooted in its size.
At only about five square miles, it’s far from New Jersey’s largest city. But developers say that scale has provided a manageable starting point for the municipality’s growth in recent decades, allowing it
to harness the vast resources of business, academic and political leaders that are often available in
other urban centers but are not leveraged as successfully.
“We have a lot of the same institutions,” said Chris Paladino, president of New Brunswick Development Corp., or Devco. “We just have it in a much more condensed critical mass.”
Capitalizing on those assets has been a hallmark of New Brunswick’s economic revival over the past 30
to 40 years, a stretch that has seen billions of dollars in redevelopment. Paladino and other key industry figures said as much recently at an event hosted by Real Estate NJ, as they discussed the philosophical and financial partnerships behind the city’s largest public- and private- sector development projects.
“From our perspective, there are not a lot of cities in the state that are like New Brunswick,” said
Wasseem Boraie, a partner with Boraie Development, pointing to the expectations that come with having strong anchor institutions and consistency in municipal government.
Boraie, whose firm is based in the city, said those institutions provide “a sense of determinism” and a set of long-term goals that private developers must reflect. That has informed the company’s
Chris Paladino
Mark Manigan
Tony Coscia
Wasseem Boraie
By Joshua Burd
All photos by Aaron Houton for Real Estate NJ